Rotary cutters are used for cutting fabric in quilt making and hobby sewing, among other uses. Such rotary cutters come in many different designs, each of which includes a handle portion and a “wheel blade” or rotary cutting blade. The various designs for rotary cutters include differing handle shapes, for ease of use or user preference, with a rotary cutting blade rotatably mounted near one end. Various designs include differing blade guard features which are intended to reduce the potential for injury to a user.
The rotary cutting blades for such cutters typically come in three standard sizes, a 28 mm diameter rotary cutting blade, a 45 mm diameter rotary cutting blade, and a 60 mm diameter rotary cutting blade. One known problem with rotary cutters is the relatively high replacement cost of the blades for these popular fabric, craft, and hobby cutting tools. Additionally, as noted in the prior art, many rotary cutting blades lack perfect roundness.
Known sharpeners for rotary cutting blades include sharpeners for the large rotary blades of commercial cutters for meat slicing and the like, which are used with the motor driven blade of the cutter. Also, known are smaller manual sharpeners for hand held rotary cutters, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,238,096, 5,660,582 and 5,499,943, the disclosures of each of which are incorporated by reference herein. However, these types of manual sharpener require the wheel blade to be removed from the cutter and secured within the device, following which the user rotates a portion of the device by hand to rub the cutting edge of the blade against an abrasive grit. This requires a significant effort on the part of the user, which may be problematic for some customers.
One attempt to address these shortcomings has resulted in the RBS-61 Rotary Cutter Blade Sharpener available from Inventive Circles, LLC. However, such sharpener requires a rotary blade to be bolted to in place on an open top, then a rotating head positioned thereover which rotates an abrasive disk against the blade, rotating the blade. A complete sharpening requires removing and replacing the blade to sharpen both edges twice, once with a “diamond disc”, and once with an “ultrafine disc”. Such a sharpener is relatively bulky and harder to transport. Further, the continual exposure of the rotary blade during sharpening and the additional handling of the blade required to complete sharpening increase the likelihood of injury to a user.
Accordingly there exists a need for assemblies and devices that address these problems. A system or assembly that allowed for a rotary blade to be honed or sharpened quickly with reduced chance of injury to a user would be an improvement in the art. Such a sharpener that was easily portable and relatively inexpensive would be further improvement in the art.